where's the geek?
posted April 22, 2004 at 10:48 pm
Why is it when you really could use a geeky guy in your life, there's never one around?
I just want a very simple thing: to network my personal laptop and my work laptop so that I can share files between them. I have followed the instructions repeatedly, and both laptops keep telling me the workgroup I've set up is not available and that "perhaps" I don't have permission to access it.
Laptop #1 (personal) can't see either itself or Laptop #2 (work) listed in My Network Places, but #2 can see them yet can't open #1. Both can access my wireless Internet connection just fine.
I've tried everything I can think of, and exhausted the mechanical depths of the various troubleshooters on XP (which finally gave up and basically said, "sorry, you're screwed!"). Pfffft.
I tried enabling Remote Desktop Connections. #1 can ping #2 (with a couple of timeouts) but #2 can't ping #1. Neither can make a remote connection with the other.
I'm sure it's something very silly that I will smack myself for if I ever figure it out, but in the meantime, I'm highly annoyed about the whole thing.
I could really use my own personal geek boy right now, but all the ones I know are either out of town or I'm no longer on speaking terms with them (guess which group is the largest?) so I'm out of luck for the moment.
Comments
Ugh. I hope some geek comes to your rescue sometime really soon!! :)
Hehe, me too! It's making me batty - I hate when I can't make *any* computer-related thing bend to my will!! ;-)
Hey girlie,
go to my computer and right click, click on properties. click on the tap that says computer name
click on CHANGE, about 1/2 down the page
Both laptops need to be in the same workgroup to see each other. They both also have to be on the same ip address range i.e. 192.168.1.x
This should work/help
Bruce
mcse, ccea, ccna and all around computer geek
p.s. (not all computer geeks are geeks)
Hi, Bruce. They're both in the same workgroup, and the IPs are 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3.
When I try (on #1) to "View all computers in my workgroup" under My Network Places, that's when I get the error saying the workgroup isn't accessible and I may not have permissions to access it.
On #2, I can see both computers listed under the workgroup in My Network Places, I just can't access #1 if I click on it (same error as above re: permissions).
P.S. I have a very special fondness for computer-literate men, so to me, "geek" is a term of much affection, and not at all a condemnation of their personalities. ;-)
Point taken about the geek thing :-) (blushing brightly).
Ok, two dumb things to check that you probably already have. 1. Make sure you ahve file sharing enabled on both laptops and 2. make sure you have the files you want to share, shared with access granted to the everyone group. This should do it. of course you may need to reboot for it all the sync.
Okay. I do not believe this.
I have no idea how or why, but today, it works. I didn't do anything; I was about to check on the file sharing as you suggested, and on a lark, just decided to open up My Network Places again, and lo and behold - I can see both laptops!! Whee!
I suppose it could be a reboot thing, but seriously, I rebooted several times yesterday during all this business, so I'm not 100% certain that's what it needed. But it doesn't matter, I am a very happy woman now!
Bruce, are you sure you didn't do some geek mojo magic over here when I wasn't looking?? :-D
Yay for Bruce! That's great that its working now! Now Shelley, keep all of that mind for when I'm working on the same thing soon, 'kay??! :D
Haha! You assume I actually *know* what the heck I did to make it work!! :-D
Trade in your Pee-Cee and get a Mac. Rendezvous automatically recognizes peripherals and establishes networks.
Next time you see a geek... treat him nicely. You may need him latter ;)
All you really have to do is ask. But you knew that didn't you?
Just because something is possible doesn't make it appropriate. But you knew that, didn't you?
Just incase it doesn't work later, here's a secret tip just for you:
Start > run > \\[ip of other machine]
Example from 192.168.1.2:
\\192.168.1.3
Network neighborhood is a crap shoot, even in XP.
I used to deal with this all the time, and I still never personally use it, I just do the \\ and map drives if I want full access :)
Oh, and yes, this does mean that if you know someone online with no firewall and a folder shared that you can put thier ip instead of a local one :)
Ah. I see you've become a victim of the 15-minute refresh rate on Windows network connections (probably NetBIOS). Josh's IP advice would've really helped get your network up and running. Best of luck to you anyway.
This happened to me recently - it's weird that Xp doesn't have things set up properly by default. You need something called Service Advertising Protocol enabled on both computers to tell them to tell the network that they have stuff to share (you'd think that selecting a drive to share would take care of this, but...)
See if this works:
1. Go to control panel (duh)
2. Go to Network Connections (duh)
3. Click on your local area connection
4. Click properties
5. Something called "service advertising protocol" needs to be installed to share files. Click around in this section until you find and install that.
6. Do the same on the other computer
7. If you need to, run the network setup wizard again and reboot until it works.
Hope this helps!
Hey, contact me at AIM: kolbsoft, I would be more than happy to help you out.
Hi
Is it too much to ask to just have a lovely geeky guy come sweep you off your feet?!?!?!
I'm 15 and would luv to have a geeky guy boyfriend the same age as me
luv
julie
x
The secret to networking two Windows PCs together is to have the same workgroup name and also NetBIOS service. installed on both of them.
This can be done accessing the Local Area Connection properties, adding the protocol Netbios and voilá!
Works 99% of the time.
If you REALLY wanna ensure 100% connection, you just need to set up one machine as a DHCP server, then the other machine as a dhcp IP-assigned client, and bosh: connectivity all the time. ;)
OR... Buy a router that has a DHCP server built in, then your PCs will be able to see each other - and route to each other fine too. :)
I ran into a situation like this a while ago... Turns out, they need to have a language to speak together! This language is called a protocol. In WinXP, make sure that NetBIOS is ENABLED over TCP/IP and it will work most every time.